The cold is the new hot: how to cool has become the hottest trend of summer | Fashion

If you are reading this, it is probably because you are hot. In which case, according to the concepts, this one will be music to your ears. Or rather balm for your sunburn.

The heatwave has created a need for cooling that extends beyond a cold shower – and the current cold trend in the world of wellness, beauty and beauty. exercise is timely. All about Bikram yoga, hot cleaning and saunas. But is this penchant for the cold more than a whim? Or is it simply the latest fashion to be marketed by the wellness industry?

Living the virtues of cold is in fact nothing new. The cold baths, void of movement, go back to Hippocrates, with the benefits offered as obscure as any pool – cold showers claim to increase circulation, reduce stress, revive your immune system and release endorphins as well as you refresh.

At the top of the current charge is cryotherapy, which involves standing in your underwear in a room, cooled to a cool -90C (-130F), and watching your arm hair turn to freeze . A product of sports science – having played one of the longest games at Wimbledon this year, Kevin Anderson said he planned to sit in an ice bath to recover – he There are now cryochambers all over the country with users who call chillseekers. In winter, he feels good. In summer, it's happy. It is geared toward general health, arthritis pain, and sports recovery, but also has more holistic benefits "such as [fighting] jet lag, [aiding] sleep or boosting energy," says Sarah Harding of 111Cryo, one of the many clinics that offers therapy. "We have absolutely noticed a peak since the heat wave," she says. "People need to calm down." The cold, which was once normal – even during the British summer – suddenly became a product, if not a luxury.

Less extreme is the cold shower. Reddit hosts over 30 subreddits that discuss the benefits, including the 30-day freezing challenge and the 100-day cold shower. Katharine Hepburn has taken them all her life – her father, urologist and pioneer of social hygiene, instilled them as routine – and looks at her. This week, Elle Macpherson said that she started the day with "three cycles of hot and cold water switching" for various conscious reasons – and frankly, look at it too.

I started finishing my hot shower with a chilled breath after a friend who takes cold showers every morning told me that he had never felt better . Parking the science for a while, the benefits were clear from the start. He follows the theory established by the French epigrammist Nicolas Chamfort: "a man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure not to meet anything more revolting in the day to come". In short, it is rooted in annoyance, but that is precisely why you do it; the rest of the day is a breeze from there.

Even cold yoga is carving out a similar place. Brrrn, a new fitness studio in Manhattan, which opened in May, offers a 16C (61F) yoga class, as well as a 7C (45F) temperature. At Frame, London, yoga classes are now taken with the door open, where the focus was on heat preservation.

And there are also ice rollers designed to help degrade the skin and reduce redness. an ice cube can also do the business. "I'm reluctant to say that the cold will actually change your skin, but it's obviously nice to have cold things on your face," says Skin Expert, Dr. Mervyn Patterson. "And you could argue that if you have swelling under the eyes, a cold compress might help."

In many ways, he feels like a fad. The welfare industry has exploded exponentially in recent years – and dichotomizing consumers and changing trends are good for business. There are those who follow an eight-step cleaning routine. And those who pride themselves on arranging everything and returning to nature.

If this explosion seems to go against the feminist discourse – all the lotions and potions that are packaged, however secretly, to make a "better" – then it is possible that the cold came out of the same well ; that being cold is the pinnacle of a well-being purified, natural – even macho – well-being. Wim Hof, the Dutch health guru, has a cult status to suggest that cold body therapy is the key to good health.

We will be sorry when the heat wave is gone, of course. But until that day arrives, until the grass becomes green and the sea returns to its icy standard – until this heat wave is over. – Thank God, the cold is in fashion.